In an industry in which image is a key element in attracting new business and keeping existing accounts, many brokers feel their firm’s persona does little to help them and, in some cases, actually hinders them.
One of the biggest complaints is that the banks spend most of their advertising dollars marketing their own brand, leaving the bank-owned brokerage firms in their long shadows.
“They aren’t marketing us effectively,” says a Montreal broker at TD Evergreen Investment Services Inc. Evergreen scored a relatively low 7.6 in this year’s Brokerage Report Card on the question of how brokers view their company’s public image.
“TD Bank Financial is promoting the hell out of its side, but people still get confused between Evergreen and Green Line [now TD Waterhouse Group Inc.],” he says.
Another Evergreen broker in Toronto agrees. “The name change from Green Line to Waterhouse was a good move, but people really don’t know Evergreen. There’s no brand recognition compared with a BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. or RBC Dominion Securities Inc. A lot of people ask me if I’m selling forest products or if I want to cut their lawns,” he says. Compounding the problem is that although Green Line, the firm, has ceased to exist, Green Line mutual funds soldier on. “We’re still fighting that differentiating battle.”
“Not enough press”
A further issue, he adds, is the press coverage the different TD arms receive. “Waterhouse gets more press; Evergreen gets no press. I don’t know what our press liaison, if we have one, is doing. I don’t think we get enough press. In surveys like this, often Evergreen isn’t even mentioned; we come in as TD Securities [Inc.],” he says.
Brokers at National Bank Financial Inc. (which finished below Evergreen in the Report Card) have their problems. When Lévesque Beaubien Geoffrion Inc. merged with First Marathon Inc. and changed the name to match its bank owner, confusion about who the firm is and what it does resulted. “The public image was much better before it changed its name,” says one Montreal broker. “Now nobody knows who we are.”
One of the brokerage’s brokers in Chatham, Ont., says there is virtually no brand recognition. “Everyone thinks we’re a bank,” he says.
In English Canada, however, some brokers are happy with the new moniker because the chance of anti-French bias is reduced.
Another complaint is that the banks promote their brokerages differently in different parts of Canada. One broker with four years’ experience at ScotiaMcLeod Inc. in eastern Ontario, says he doesn’t know what the firm’s public image is. “In Calgary, ScotiaMcLeod is known as the best investment house in town. In Kingston, it’s CIBC Wood Gundy. Each town has a powerhouse brokerage. But I guess no image isn’t as bad as a bad image. People don’t see us as a bunch of dummies.”
For relatively new names, getting consumer recognition can be a challenge. Merrill Lynch Canada has had difficulty transferring the firm’s U.S. and international recognition to Canada. Nonetheless, Merrill brokers ranked the firm the highest in terms of public image of all national brokerages in Canada.
“Canadians haven’t had much chance to get to know Merrill,” says a Winnipeg broker. “We’re building our image in Canada because we’re known institutionally and with high-net-worth clients, but the average person is just starting to find out about us.”
Once an image becomes fixed in consumers’ minds, it can take years to change, says a Vancouver broker at Canaccord Capital Corp. The firm ranked next to last in the image department.
“Many people think it’s a high-flying cowboy show at Canaccord because that’s what it was 10 to 15 years ago,” he says. “We’ve hired people with different images, financial planners and money managers, as opposed to strictly transaction-based people. We’ve made a transition, but the public image hasn’t changed yet.”